Of the 22 produce tables at the Madison County Farmers Market, representatives of three growers worked three half-tables Tuesday around lunchtime.

"We just need to grow more farmers," said Becky Sanford, a local grower whose days as a farmers' market customer go back 30 years. "The farmers that used to fill up this place seven days a week, they are all 70, 80, 90 or dead."

But Tuesday's image that shoppers lack interest in buying locally grown fruits and vegetables, is false, the produce sellers said, and they want the Madison County Commission to add more days to the weekly 3-day schedule, more months to the annual 6-month schedule and/or at least extend the weekday hours to 6 p.m.

So while the market on Cook Avenue likely will never return to the days when every table was full every day of the week, it still has potential to be a lot more than it showed this year, they said. It does fill up most tables on Fridays and Saturdays, they added.

The market is scheduled to close in November and not reopen until next spring, though all the vendors present Tuesday were under the impression it closed in two weeks. The commission has regularly discussed the market since it took office in November 2012, hearing regular complaints from sellers and patrons. They hired a new part-time manager, re-established a board to manage it and set hours from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. They also banned professional sellers who brought in wholesale produce and limited sellers to being from Madison or an adjoining county.

Colleen Brooks and Melissa Butler address the commission in August saying the changes have the market "running smoothly for the first time in years", but they need more hours and days for selling because "a lot of produce is going to the dump."

While shelling purple hull peas, Jean Williams of Harvest said a good place for another improvement is extending the weekday hours until 6 p.m.

Tuesdays typically bring fewer shoppers because the market closes too early for patrons to come after work, she said.

"Taxpayers are paying for this building, and we ought to be able to use it," Williams said.

Butler said limited weekly schedule and closing before commuters get off work was particularly hard on this summer's corn crop and a lot was thrown away. Any corn not sold on Tuesday will become too hard when the market re-opens on Friday, she said, and to be safe they usually only harvest corn the day before it sells. Okra can only go one day on the shelf, she added.

The three growers at the market Tuesday said they would like to see a longer market season, perhaps extended to Christmas.

Most people don't realize it, but most growers can get in three sets of crops from early spring to late fall, and others intentionally stagger planting schedules to extend peak growing seasons, they said.

"We plant stuff to sell clean up to Christmas," Williams said. And Stanford said a fall market would encourage more growers to plan a fall crop, but they won't if they know they have to sell from the back of their truck on the roadside.

Growers can bring in plenty of locally grown sweet potatoes, apples, kale, pumpkins, turnip greens, mustard greens and collard greens well into December, they said, and green beans and peas will linger from late summer to early fall. The next two Saturdays, market patrons should find apples, muscadines and scuppernongs.

Karen Milly, who said she has shopped at the Madison County Farmers Market for 42 years, supported the idea of opening another day.

"I would come to farmers market every day if I could get it," she said. "I love the farmers market. You can't get this kind of fresh produce in grocery stores because what they have has been picked a week before it gets on their shelves."

The growth of church-sponsored farmers markets, including Green Street Market by the Episcopal Church of the Nativity in Downtown Huntsville, Latham UMC's and First Baptist Church of Meridianville on Tuesdays and St. Thomas Episcopal Church's on Bailey Cove Road on Saturdays have cut taken away growers and shoppers from the county market, they said.

The county market also must overcome years of neglect from the previous county commission, Butler and Stanford said, which stopped promoting it. And while the existing commission has paid more attention to the market's needs, it could help with more promotions and more time to sell produce, they said.

This article was updated Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014, to clarify that the farmers market will remain open into November.